Reflecting on a year past – Part 2 Embracing Tantra and its healing energy

You have to trust where you are being guided and at times I trust my instincts and do this whole heartedly without a second thought. On other occasions, however, fear and procrastination hold me back from wonderful experiences and opportunities and I recognise this. I decided I needed to focus on energy and in developing the Reiki side of my business. I needed to develop MY knowledge of energy to a greater depth and the only way to truly appreciate the benefit of energy is to experience it first-hand.

We all have energy flowing through us. Our bodies have seven major chakras points. Chakras are areas within the body where energy meridian pathways cross and meet. When these energy centres are balanced we feel great, healthy, uplifted and positive. However, on occasions these energy centres get blocked due to various triggers, conditionings, beliefs and stress in our lives and this can have the opposite effect. Energy is all around us and this energy connects us to every living being. We intuitively pick up on this energy e.g. have you ever walked into a room and instinctively knew that something was wrong? You have sensed the energy. Reiki is healing energy and I have a desire to help people, so I put it “out there” to the Universe that I was willing to gain a deeper knowledge, understanding and awareness of energy in order to help others.

The boomerang reply which came back was NOT what I expected! By chance, I was asked if I did Tantra Yoga. Being honest I wasn’t even sure what Tantra was other than Sting engaged in it. So I took to Google and in particular to Wikipedia –

Tantra is the name given by scholars to a style of meditation and ritual which arose in India no later than the 5th Century AD.

I also knew through yoga that all forms of Yoga stemmed originally from Tantra. So, I decided I wanted to know more about the subject of Tantra and not just hearsay. If for no other reason, I wanted to be able to pass on and relay proper informed information to any further queries which happened my way. I continued my search on Google and found Vesco Bondov. Vesco describes Tantra best when he says,

“It is ultimately about feeling our own power and this then brings the self-realisation and the enlightenment”.

At our first meeting Vesco successfully identified areas in my energy field which needed addressing. I had had minor surgery prior to our meeting which I had not disclosed and he advised me that I needed healing in this area.

Vesco is an intellectually highly educated person in many fields outside of Tantra. His background is in psychotherapy, art therapy, dance and martial arts to name but a few. He was one of the founders of Transcendental Meditation in his native Bulgaria and Director of the First TM-Yogic Flying/Levitation course there. He was also one of the pioneers of the more dynamic styles of Hatha Yoga in Ireland a few years back.

Vesco is an extremely gentle, kind hearted person with an endless bounty of knowledge and dedication. He also has an enormous perception of the human spirit and form. He is exceptionally patient and understanding and I will be the first to admit I was NOT the easiest of clients. I often challenged, fought and unknowingly tried to manipulate him on many levels as fear of change held me rooted in old holding patterns and conditionings. Vesco, however, saw beyond my masks and armouring to see the injured human being I was at source and the layers I had built around myself as my modem of strength. Under his innate intuition, guidance and support through means of breath work, awareness, music and with a little bit of therapeutic wrestling thrown in (to activate deeper holding patterns), I am slowly beginning to recognise the masks of protection and armouring I encase myself behind and wear quite unbeknownst to myself.

I am learning how conditioning and beliefs shape us into beings with fears, anxieties, patterns and tendencies which successfully crush our spirits and limit us not just in our physical bodies but our mental and emotional ones too. It rings true that fear in one area of our lives hinders us in all other areas because once again both personal and business lives are interconnected. Why? Because we store these emotions in our physical bodies thereby, causing ripple effects into our energetic bodies. This creates illnesses, blockages and armouring as we try to control events and people in our lives in order to protect ourselves from getting hurt. This is SO unhealthy. Personally, I was guilty on a lot of fronts and now I am very much aware of this.

During this time I struggled with ME on occasions and there were periods where suppressed emotions within me brought forth moments of aggression, anger, sadness, tears and isolation. Difficult trying times for someone who normally doesn’t face these emotions but opts instead to swallow them, smile, see the positive side and then just get on with things. The energy work and introspection made me physically heavy and weighed down by it all. There were days where I felt like I had physically been to battle. Days where I wished I was alone on a deserted island to absorb, lick wounds and re-gather my strength in order to continue. Those were the duvet days where I just wanted to hide from the world and the occasions where I felt fear the greatest. But you can get busy living or you can get busy dying. Life for me is for living and the desire to do so is unfathomable. I can honestly say now, I am more grounded, content and happy within my life than I have been for years.

Tantra has taught me that fear stunts our growth as human beings, it limits our lives. Love opens us up in immeasurable ways. Fear keeps us locked behind self-inflicted prison walls. Love breaks down those walls and I’m not talking about the fluffy, gooey fairy-tale love but deep love and acceptance of all that is. There are five primal fears and seven major fears yet there is only ONE love. In fear mode we engage primal instincts to survive. We are unable to effectively feel deep genuine emotions but are controlled instead by our flight, fight or freeze response. We are unable to grow or flourish into the remarkable loving sensual beings we were born to be. We are unable to appreciate and feel the ecstasy of true natural essential living. Vesco has taught me that Tantra awakens you to the essence of who you truly are at the heart of it all, at source where we are the most pure. Here we are boundless, there is no limit to our potential as human beings. Tantra is a powerful healing energy which encourages self-love and love of others. Tantra is love at its most natural greatest form. It is self-realisation and awakening to the enormous potential we ALL have as human beings. Tantra in effect is LOVE and the complete opposite to fear.

Slowly but surely, I am opening to genuine feelings. I am beginning to ask myself – “how do I feel? How do I, REALLY, feel and not how would others expect me to feel? ” There is a huge difference in the response. I am learning to be present in the moment and observing the lengths my mind will go to in order to create a story, create fear and prevent me from being truly present in any given situation. I am learning how devious and controlling our minds can be as I continue to step outside my comfort zone, embracing new opportunities and being receptive to the healing benefits gained through Tantra. I am learning trust once again and being self-empowered as I learn to trust my own innate inner guidance. A year ago, I would not have written about this as I would have been afraid of what other people would think. I have grown and I am delighted that I have done so. I have changed in so many ways, the greatest being that I now realise and accept that what other people think of me is actually none of my business. What matters most is what I think of myself, the freedom in this is unreal. It is extraordinary because I am being free, genuine and for the first time in my life being true to me.

Vesco also recognised in me a behavioural pattern where I persistently push myself to overachieve, to incessantly seek answers and to keep forging ahead whilst at the same time successfully managing to ignore what it is I am really avoiding in my life. Strength of character is important to survive in life, to survive challenges and tribulations. Strength has its place. I am a survivor and strong in character but being strong all the time creates imbalance in me as a person so I am learning it is also vitally important to be vulnerable, a quality I tend to supress and hide. Both qualities balance life just like yin and yang. Vesco recommended that I see Rosemary Khelifa a Re-Birthing specialist and this brings me into the final section of my blog.

So from an energetic point of view this year has taught me that…… recognising, accepting and loving the true essence of who we are at the heart of it all, is the single most healing benefit there is.